writing_shadows

It was a great feast. The table groaned beneath the weight of the food; lamb stuffed with rice, nuts and raisins, stuffed dates, spiced almonds, and candied fruits. At the high table sat the slim, graceful figure of one of the Emperor’s most precious of tale crafters. She was quiet, for the most part, surveying the room and only occasionally turning to murmur softly to the man who sat at her side.

As dinner ended, and night drew in, their host raised his arm.

“Something different.” he said quietly, and brought his sleeve down to rub a bright blue bottle.

********************

Some songs are always sad.

These songs came late at night, when the candles have burnt low, and the coffee has grown bitter and cold. They come like the wind off the desert or the cry of the wolf in the dark. They are the songs that stay with you after you have dimmed the light and stoked up the brazier, pulling your warm wool blankets up around your chin.

These songs are always sad, and they haunt your dreams, floating through your memory like smoke in the sky, or the scent of a woman who you can never hold.

********************

Ever was not sure afterwards why she helped him. It wasn’t just that he was handsome. Everyone who came to those banquets was handsome. It wasn’t just that he had smiled at her. People did smile at her, although more often they frowned as if troubled by the thoughts her songs invoked. Maybe it was just that he needed help, and she was tired of a land in which there was no compassion.

Perhaps, in the end, it was all of these.

She had expected the kiss. That had seemed almost inevitable.

And then he left. That was inevitable too.

********************

When the soft morning light came slip-sliding through the half open silk curtains which covered the door, it showed a magpie there, perched cheerfully atop a golden statue, with a blood red ruby in its beak. It looked around with beady eyes, noting the slightly grubby glass bottle sitting on a table.

The bottle was made of dark blue glass, and something inside seemed to shift and swirl, like smoke.

The magpie tilted her head and looked at that bottle with one clear black eye. It had a feeling it was being watched. So it bowed before it flew away.

********************

The bottle broke.

Why the bottle broke is another story, Ever would later say, and she would not explain why she did not wish to tell it. Instead she simply said that she remembered the bird.

The bird had been black and white and beautiful in flight. And in amidst the silks and splendours of the Caliph’s Palace, Ever had thought how beautiful it must be to be free. It was later that she had remembered that she had once been a girl in a battered leather jacket, and her father had once read a Robert Browning poem to her.

********************

Ever was cold.

She hadn’t felt the cold like this for a long time. This was not the sharp, dry chill of the desert at night. This was the wet, clinging, gnawing cold of a rain soaked land. This was a cold without hope of respite in the dawn’s light. This was cold which could eat a person whole.

And there was the iron. It felt rough against Ever’s wrists and ankles and was tight enough around her neck that she felt as if she could scarcely breathe.

The Caliph’s palace was far behind, but home felt somehow even further.

********************

“What is that?”

“I found her in the Hedge.”

“Is she dead?”

“I don’t think so. Almost. She was pretty deep in when I found her. She’s lucky to be alive.”

“And she’s lucky to be free. Look at those marks on her wrists. She was chained somewhere, recently.”

“Her neck and ankles are marked too. It looks like she was kept for a while. Longer than Privateers normally keep people.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Privateers. Maybe she is fresh from…from the other place.”

“Well, either way, she’s free now. She’s with us. And we won’t let her go back again.”

********************

There’s a stall in a market where people in the know like to go. It’s a little stall, run by a man with flippers for feet and a hoarse laugh. Behind the stall sits a small plump woman with hair the colour of flame, who likes to knit, but who ends up just smelling of burnt wool.

The stall is all hung about with cages, each one containing a small twittering hedge beast with a label around each neck.

“How do you find them?” a patron asks, and the stallholder winks.

“We sing ‘em out of the trees,” he says.

********************

The little man with the clicksies!

He came to mind in a flash. He had been there before. He had saved Ever’s life, and he’d been kind to her. He was, admittedly, a little peculiar, but so were most people and he had at least seemed like he had some decency to him.

He would help. Or at least, Ever probably wouldn’t be putting herself in danger just talking to him. She pulled on her battered doc marten boots, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and took a very deep breath.

It was time to go back to the freehold.